I’d just assume have a root canal without pain killer as suffer through an editorial by Carol Shea-Porter, but sometimes you have to take one for the team. So I have immersed myself in the last rights editorial of the soon to be former congresswoman from New Hampshire’s first district, which is ironically titled, ‘Public Service is about trust.’
Trust?
Before I proceed let me offer up a comment on Carol’s notion of trust. In traditional progressive fashion the meaning of trust has had to have been tortured before admitting under duress and threat of death to its friends and family members, that Carol’s application of it’s meaning holds any relevance at all to the historical application. In fact Carol’s willingness to even use the word in this context, nay–any context at all–in reference to what she refers to as her public service, is a public disservice to the word, the language, the people of the first district, and serves to cement the likelihood that she is the disconnected, ruling class political shill we suspect her to be, if not also clinically insane.
Money laundering is illegal unless you are in congress. Once you are a member in good standing you earn the privelege of access to a hoard of cash accumulated by the hundreds and hundreds of congressional PAC’s fed by those buying influence. It is money that comes from lobbyists, special interests, the corporate culture of business big and small, unions, fringe groups, mainstream special interests, and everyone else. Carol Shea Porter is a willing recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars over her congressional career from this polluted well, but she would like very badly for to believe that "the money don’t know where it came from."
Independent voices might have some expectation of doing independent things. Things like reading legislation or accessing resources outside the ones the people desperately selling a bill want you to stick to. That kind of open mindedness would go a long way to demonstrating integrity and responsibility. Or you could be Carol Shea Porter. 
Listening to twenty or so people give political speeches in succession may well be worse than being water-boarded. Listening to twenty or so political speeches in an air-conditioned room with close to 300 people who (more or less) are on board with just about everything that is likely to be said at that kind of event is choir practice. But having that kind of access to that many candidates for three hours is priceless.